acceptable use - web site linking

[Kevin H]

Linking to 3rd party web sites from posts on this site is quite acceptable providing it is in the context of the discussion and is going to be useful to the majority of people who are reading the thread. If you are linking to a site that you control we would appreciate a reciprocal link on your site.

What is not acceptable in any event (regardless of it's relevance), is blatant use of this site to promote another site. An example of this is repeatedly linking to another site in multiple threads without good reason.

Any URLs which continually crop up in different threads, (particularly if all the posts are by the same person, and/or if they contain advertising), now risk being added to our list of 'unwanted words', which means they will be automatically obfuscated site wide for evermore.

[Kevin H]

One or two people seem to have a misconception that posts containing URLs are actively moderated, meaning they are vetted before they go live on the site. This is not the case.

Any moderation posts (including URLs therein) is done on an exception basis. Which means if I see a post on the site (or a post is 'reported' by another member) which I consider to be inappropriate it will be deleted. I do occasionally edit posts to remove email artefacts or tidy up formatting if it's really bad!

There is also an "unwanted words" list in the site admin system which contains swear words and some words relating to race which may be considered offensive. Any words that appear on this list will automatically (without human intervention) be blanked out if they appear in a post.

This is also used to exclude URL's that are breach of our "acceptable use - web site linking policy" details above.